“Reading the Bible in Nazi Germany"

"Gerhard von Rad's Attempt to Reclaim the Old Testament for the Church”

This fascinating article looks at von Rad in his social context of Nazi Germany and how he read the OT in that context. He taught at the University of Jena, the school where DeWette had given his famous dissertation on Deuteronomy many years earlier. The school was run by an ardent SS officer/medical scientist until 1945. Von Rad thought of Deuteronomy not as law but a collection of sermons from traveling Levites. But he does not back this up with exegetical support. Levinson thinks that this lack of support comes from his social context and passion to keep the importance of the OT. Von Rad was probably chosen for his position because of a supposed sympathy for the Nazi movement. Jena was the first school to remove the requirement to study Hebrew, a move which von Rad strongly resisted. New Nazi-flavored classes were begun, while von Rad taught his own OT classes in response. But he had very few students throughout the war. In 1936, there were 155 in the Faculty of Theology, but von Rad's three classes had totals of 4, 2, and 2 students. By 1944 the total number of students in the Faculty had shrunk to ten, and von Rad still had between 2 and 4 students in each of his classes. 45 dissertations were submitted during this time, none of which were supervised by von Rad. The Confessing Church sents students to von Rad every year just so the school would stay open. Levinson thinks that von Rad's move to call Deuteronomy sermons was arbitrary. Von Rad often spoke out publicly that the OT is important as Christian Scripture. He did not want the OT to be regarded as law (and hence Jewish), so he argued that it was filled with grace, which led him to sermon. While the conclusion of the article is tendentious against the idea of Deuteronomy as a sermon, the history presented is worth reading. I had often wondered what von Rad did during the time of the Nazis.

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